Stirling City

Stirling Heroes #67

Irregular Circumstances: Finding Francis Fabien.

Months have passed since the arrest of Death Scarab and life has been quiet for the Stirling Heroes. It is a usual Monday when Professor Atom phones the base trying to contact them. HuBot answered the phone. He’s good at that. Professor Atom requested a meeting with the Stirling Heroes as he, and someone else, had something to ask them. HuBot agreed that this sounded ok and arranged to meet up with them at Tron Labs within the hour. Alerting the rest of the team to the impending meeting, including The Arc-Angel who was taking time out of his extensive biological enhancement research, HuBot then rocketed off to Tron Labs and proceeded to patrol the facility (at the speed of sound) until the others arrived and Alec Tron was able to prevent the labs from going into a full lockdown (in response to HuBot’s alarming behaviour).

Soon Professor Atom and Night-Ward arrived at Tron Labs and they all got settled into a secure meeting room. Night-Ward explained how, several days ago, Francis Fabien had agreed to take his new group (the Stirling City Irregulars) of (mostly) untried heroes out into the field to try solving a multiple homicide that was committed at The Toadstool. Francis Fabien and his group began investigating and were following up on leads. They now haven’t been heard from in 24 hours and so Night-Ward would like the Stirling Heroes to take up the search. The Stirling Heroes agree that this is important work and so after they regroup back at base (where The Arc-Angel decides that Agent Gibbs is in no condition to go around helping people at present), Shadow Stalker teleports the group to just outside The Toadstool.

While the uniformed officer at the door of The Toadstool is finding out if he can allow the Stirling Heroes in, Shadow Stalker begins nosing around the bar, looking for untouched spirits to “investigate for clues”. Eventually the others are allowed in and The Arc-Angel asks Shadow Stalker to stop contaminating the crime scene, so he complies. The group makes their way down into the secret basement of The Toadstool where they find evidence of a slaughter (for further details, see Captain Awesome #4). Shadow Stalker uses his ESP to look for secret rooms surrounding this arcane ritual area and is rewarded with finding a well-furnished study, walled with bookshelves full of books in a variety of different languages. Of those books that are written in English, the heroes are able to notice an occult theme is prevalent in the subject matter.

With no real clues left for them to investigate here, Frostbite uses his powerful sense of smell to follow the lingering traces of Francis Fabien up into the main section of the club and then out, past the confused uniformed police officer, onto the busy Old Stirling sidewalk. The trail, though faint, led down the sidewalk to the curb, where it then mingled with the smells of the dozens, if not hundreds of cars that had pulled up there in the past few days. The trail had gone cold.